Finished pole lathe

We had a chance to do a bit of work on the pole lathe today, it's mostly finished now. We've still got a bit of tweaking to do to get it turning really well but we managed to get some shavings flying at least! 

Damon trying his hand at turning on a pole lathe for the first time. 

The ash sapling seems to provide a good spring. However, we did have to add a brace to support the pole. 

Once we've made a few adjustments to it I shall post up some more detailed photos. We're hoping to try a bit of bowl turning on it as well.

'Rooted' Pole Lathe Pt 1

Over the past few weeks I've been helping the guys at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk build a pole lathe. But one with a bit of a difference; the legs are rooted into the ground! Here's a few pictures of Oxburgh's first addition to their new green woodworking area. 

The 'rooted' ash pole lathe legs

Cutting out the lathe bed, ash again. 

Measuring up the tenons on the top of the legs

Cutting the tenons

Lathe bed seems to sit fairly level upon the legs. It's quite sturdy at the moment but we may have to add some wedges. 

Splitting the stocks or 'poppets' from a large oak log.

One half of the log, a bit of rot can be seen inside the log now that it's been split. We cut this rot out in the end. 

Shaping the poppets

A slot is required in each poppet for a wedge to be driven into; this pulls the poppet hard down onto the lathe bed. Here I'm using a brace and bit to remove most of the material for the slot. 

The pole lathe so far. It's pretty heavy weight and with those rooted legs it's definitely not going to be wobbling about! We've been joking that we'll have to prune the legs every so often as they re-sprout!

A conveniently grown ash sapling is located perfectly in front of our new lathe. This lathe certainly isn't portable.

We're hoping that the lathe will be a dual purpose lathe, for bowls and for spindles.

Hay Time!

It's that time of year; the grass is long, the sun is shining and it's time to make hay! It's not coppicing, but I thought that it may be of interest to people. This year we had the opportunity to cut the grass in the orchard at work using scythes, turn it by hand and collect it by horse. Scything is something that I have never been involved with before, though after a training course last week and a week of scything I'm absolutely hooked....

A bunch of enthusiastic trainee-scythers

I've done quite a bit of scrub clearance and grass cutting with brush cutters in the past but using the scythe is completely different; It's bliss! There's no noisy engine, fumes or fuel to feed the machine, you don't have to wear a harness or a hard hat and ear defenders.

To keep the scythe sharp it's imprortant to periodically 'peen' the blade, more on this in a future post...

We were fortunate to have a week of good weather last week up here in Norfolk, perfect for drying out the hay. We turned it everyday to ensure that it was dry through. 

Hay gathered up into windrows

Come Thursday afternoon the hay was dry enough to gather up, we had the opportunity to use the Suffolk Punch horse, Bowler for this job. 

Bowler pulling the cart with Richard on the reins. 

Loading the hay.

Going through the process of cutting and harvesting this hay has been a great experience. Though harvesting hay isn't coppicing, to me it represents a similar process. In the past I worked on the chalk grasslands of Kent, so I have a lot of interest in the management of meadows for wildlife. To me managing grassland habitats with the use of scythes is the most wildlife friendly way it can be done! 

This meadow was harvested a little early to allow any wildflower seeds to fall onto the ground. We also have a wildflower meadow that we will be harvesting later in the year. 

Hay being taken back to the farm. Idyllic, right!? 

The Flexible Hazel Tree

Firstly, my apologies for the delay in this second 'tree following' post. May turned out to be a rather busy month!

The Hazel tree I'm following is coming on well, all of the buds have now broken into leaf, and the tree has become alive with all sorts of flying and crawling insects!

Perhaps I will focus a future post on the invertebrate life living on this Hazel tree, however this month I've decided to focus the post on the way in which people have utilised the natural properties of hazel for thousands of years. Some of these uses I've only just learnt about in the past month or so, others I've known about for a little longer.

The European hazel is well known for it's properties as a very flexible wood when green, similar to some species of willow ('green' meaning when the wood still has a lot of moisture present within the wood, normally not long after the tree has been felled). I knew that willow could be used to create living structures, However, I had never seen the same technique applied to hazel until recently. On a recent trip back to Oxburgh Hall (National Trust) I was shown an amazing living hazel structure that the estate ranger has created.

Though the tree I'm following is not among the trees used for this structure, they are the same species. I really like the structure that's been created, it's sited within the den building area of their woodland and provides a shelter that looks great. The ranger (Damon Hill) has used some simple weaving techniques to great effect!

Another well known use for Hazel is the making of hazel hurdles, these were traditionally used by shepherds to corral sheep. Hazel is perfectly suited to making hurdles because it's so flexible; you have to bend the weavers through 180 degrees when bending them around the end zales (zales are the upright posts within a hurdle that the weavers are woven around). Below is a small hurdle that I made recently for a stall at a Norfolk Wildlife Trust event.

Coppiced hazel poles have also been traditionally used to hold together the thatching on roofs. Short hazel rods are split in two and pointed at each end. These rods or 'spars' are then twisted into a hook shape and bashed into the thatch. 

Photo credit: BBC News in pictures

Other uses which don't really rely on the flexible properties of hazel, but more on it's ability to grow back after being cut are bean poles, pea sticks and washing line props.

All of these above mentioned uses for hazel rely on it's ability to grow back after being harvested or 'coppiced'; that's what makes hazel such a sustainable resource. If you cut down a coniferous tree to harvest the wood for timber that individual tree will die, you will have to plant another tree in it's place if you want to harvest timber again in the future from that exact spot. Many of our native deciduous trees have the ability to grow back again after being cut down. This ability of hazel to be coppiced is why it has been so widely used throughout our history here in the UK. 

The Hazel trees I've been cutting over the winter have begun sending up their new growth. It's so satisfying to see this new growth coming up, knowing that in about 8 years time it'll be ready for harvesting again!

It's been really interesting getting involved in this project, remember if you'd like to get involved with the project then check out the Loose and Leafy blog. 

I'm following a tree!

Last night I found out about an amazing project set up by a lady called Lucy down in Dorset who runs the Loose and Leafy blog

Basically she's trying to encourage people to 'follow' a tree in their local area, so that they can get to really know their chosen tree; when the buds break into leaves, when it flowers, whether certain insects associate with the tree, whether certain lichens prefer the chosen tree over others etc.

So in the spirit of things, I've decided to join in and follow my own tree. As this is a blog mainly focused on coppicing I thought that it was only natural to choose one of our most widely coppiced species in the UK; the European hazel (Corylus avellana).

My chosen hazel tree that I will be following throughout the year. 

The 2014 tree following project began in March, so I'm a little late to join, but from now on you can expect an update on my chosen hazel tree on the 7th of every month for about a year.

To start, I thought I'd do a little research into the ecology and history of the European hazel.

Fossilized pollen records preserved in peat suggest that hazel was predominant over much of the British Isles soon after the last Ice Age, appearing at roughly the same time as other wind pollinated trees such as willow, birch and alder (1). It's also likely that early Stone Age hunters and gatherers relied at least partly on hazelnuts for food. (1)

Onto it's ecology, the first thing that grabs my attention whenever I see a hazel tree is how it grows as a multi-stemmed tree even before it's been coppiced. Very rarely do you see a European hazel tree that's grown as a single stemmed example.

Though this is not the hazel that I've chosen to follow it's a great example of how a hazel tree that's never been coppiced can grow as a multi-stemmed tree. 

The hazel is monoecious, meaning that both the female and male flowers are found on the same tree (2), though the species is naturally self-sterile (i.e the tree cannot fertilize itself) (1).

This is the female flower of the hazel tree, a bud like structure with 5mm long red/pink styles. 

After a bit of research online it seems as though the hazel is extremely valuable to our native wildlife; Hazel leaves provide food for numerous moth species including the barred umber, nut tree tussock and large emerald moths. The flowers also provide an important early nectar source for a number of bumble-bee species. (2)

Widely known is that hazelnuts provide an important food source for the dormouse, perhaps less well known is that hazel trees also support a number of insect species (particularly caterpillars) that are also an important food source for dormice. (2)

Looking at the buds that are yet to burst into leaf show that the buds and leaves are arranged alternately. 

I'm really looking forward to keeping a close eye on this tree and watching it's development throughout the year. It'll be nice to really get to know the characteristics and the species interactions of a tree which I spend so much time working with.

Why not follow your own tree!? Check out the blog I mentioned earlier (Loose and Leafy) for more information about the project.

References:

1. 'The ever changing woodlands - the living countryside', Readers Digest, 1995, p63

2. http://www.rfs.org.uk/learning/Hazel, accessed on 09/04/2014

Sensitive timber extraction from pingos

Over the past few months I've been learning about the use of horses for the extraction of timber. Last week I had a chance to actually witness it first hand and learn about the type of situations when horse powered timber extraction may be the most appropriate.

In Norfolk we're fortunate to have a relatively rare type of habitat known as a 'Pingo'. Essentially, a pingo is a large pond or lake that is fed by an aquifer located below the pingo, a spring at the base of the pingo feeds it with water from the aquifer.

Unlike regular ponds and lakes that are fed by rainfall either directly into the pond or from the surrounding rainfall catchment, the water level of pingos can be high even during periods of low rainfall. However, pingos can also periodically dry up at times when the water level within the aquifer is low.

This ephemeral persistence of a pingo creates some very interesting species assemblages within the ponds. For example, the young larval stage of great crested newts are often predated by fish (such as sticklebacks). The drying up of a pingo will kill off any species that are unable to disperse into surrounding water bodies, such as fish. Therefore, predation of great crested newts is reduced.

One of the sites in Norfolk where a number of these pingos are present is the Forestry Commision owned Frost's Common, near to Thetford Forest. A recent project was set up to clear a number of the trees surrounding the pingos present on Frosts Common, in the hope that this will allow more sunlight to reach the pingos which will in turn increase the pingos value for biodiversity.

A pingo that has become overgrown with vegetation. There is a danger that left in this state, the pingo will completely silt up with leaf litter and be lost. 

Because of the inherant sensitivity of this site, it was decided by the forestry commission that horses should be used to extract the majority of timber from Frosts Common. This is where Mark Tasker of Wildwood comes in, as his horses have been trained to pull logs through the woods for timber extraction.

His horses are a cross between a Suffolk punch mare and a Cob stallion. The brown and white horse is just 2.5 years old and is still learning from the all brown, 5 year old horse. Because Mark is using the slightly less experienced, younger horse he explained that he is unable work the horses for as long in a day as he would like to. Though he also explained that his younger horse has to learn how to do the job at some point!

Interestingly the majority of the trees being felled are located to the southern side of the pingos being opened up to the light. This is because the Forestry Commision have a limit to the number of trees that they are able to fell in one season; felling to the south of an area will allow the most light into an area, therefore making the most efficient use of the felling quota.

Slow-worms and Succession

I really enjoy this time of year, the transition from winter into spring brings so much change from day to day. One of the main joys about working outside is the constant exposure to the changing seasons, and the way in which this influences the wildlife around us.

Although we had a frost last night here in Norfolk it was relatively warm in the sun today. Whilst doing a bit of work on the woodland edge today we came across a slow-worm out in the sun.

I think it's a male as it doesn't have any stripes along it's back or sides.

Whilst at work today we were preparing an area of grassland just on the edge of the woodland that we're trying to convert into a wildflower meadow to provide a nectar source for the bees and the butterflies. Whilst preparing the ground I noticed that this area could be used to demonstrate the succession of native broadleaved woodland in a very condensed form.

On the far right of the image above is the area that we're going to be sowing with a wildflower mix. To the left of this is an area of scrub dominated by brambles and hawthorn and finally to the far left of the image is the area of semi-mature woodland dominated by oak with the odd silver birch. I think it could be used as a great educational tool for kids studying habitats at school once the meadow has established.

I'm hoping that we're going to be able to use seeds of a local provinance, there's a company just a few miles away who specialise in supplying native wildflower and grass seed mixes. We'll most likely use a neutral grassland mix for sandy soils.

Sharing Skills and Knowledge

Every Monday at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse I assist in running a woodland management volunteer team. Recently, as a bit of a change for them we ran a hurdle making workshop to teach them the skills needed to make their own gate hurdles (or more hurdles for us!).

It was a great opportunity to pass on the knowledge of hurdle making,teaching others also allowed me to practice the skills that I have recently learnt. We got some great feedback from it too; it seemed they really enjoyed learning the new skills, whilst having a bit of a change from our regular woodland work.

Adriaan with a hurdle made solely by the volunteers. 

It's nice to have the opportunity to share traditional skills in this way, being part of the Norfolk museums service it feels as though we have a responsibility to keep these skills alive.

I'm hoping to run more green woodworking workshops in the future.Hopefully workshops that will be open to the public in the not too distant future, so watch this space!

If you'd like to join in with our woodland management volunteer team please feel free to get in touch. We meet every Monday at 10am and work through until about 3:30 - 4 pm.

Ash Gate Hurdles, How to: Part 2

In this post I shall continue on from my last post, where I began to outline one method used to make ash gate hurdles. I've included quite a few photos in this post so I'll let them do most of the talking. 

Tenons are cut to size using an axe and a drawknife

I usually cut my tenons to about 5cm x 2cm though the size of your tenons will depend upon the size of your auger bit that you will be using to create the mortise joints in the uprights. 

Before boring out the mortise joints draw around the tenons onto the uprights so that you can ensure that the mortise matches the tenon. Mike Abbot suggests placing the rails 8" apart from centre to centre, this gap should be slightly less at the bottom to prevent lambs from escaping! 

Stop boring through the upright once the tip of the auger thread breaks through the other side. Then turn the piece of wood over and drill back through using this small hole as a guide. This will prevent the wood from tearing out as the auger bit exits the hole. 

I use chisels to clean up the mortise, though a twybil can be used. 

Offer up tenons to check the fit. You can always shave off more material for the tenons if the fit is a bit tight. 

Drive the rails into the uprights one side at a time.

I tend to assemble one side of the hurdle before tracing around the tenons on the other upright. I find that this helps to ensure that the gate hurdle is as straight as possible once it has been assembled. It doesn't really seem to matter if the mortise joints on the second upright are slightly off of vertical if the rail has a slight twist along its length. 

Tenons driven into both uprights

All that's left to do now is to prepare the central upright and the two supporting diagonals. These are made in much the same way as the previous pieces, they are split and peeled. Once these components have been prepared they are nailed onto the rails. Nails should also be driven through the uprights and into the tenon joints as this will help to ensure a tight fit. 

The nails should be 'clenched' as illustrated in the image below, this reduces the risk of the components being pulled apart.   

Ash Gate Hurdles, How to: Part 1

Over the last few months I've been doing a lot of coppicing and thinning of the woodland at Gressenhall museum where I work, mainly for the benefit of wildlife. In the process we've been able to collect some straight grained lengths of ash, which are just what we need to construct a few ash gate hurdles! Those of you who have read the Mike Abbot's green woodworking book will recognise this method.

Lengths of straight ash of varying diameters perfect for hurdle making. There's also some oak and hazel mixed in with this pile.

We began by splitting the rails or cross-bars of the hurdle; these should be about 5-8 cm in diameter and would traditionally of been 8 foot (2.4 m) long, though ours are about 6 foot (1.83 m) long. To split the rails I used a tool called a froe and a cleaving brake. The cleaving brake is effectively a frame that allows tension and compression to be put on either side of a length of wood, it is essential that you can control these factors if the split is to run straight through the middle of the rail.

A traditional cleaving brake made from some old fence posts, giving these posts a new lease of life! 

To use this set up the froe has to be bashed into one end of the rail with a mallet, it is important to ensure that the whole width of the froes blade is inserted into the rail before any pressure is put onto the froe handle. This will prevent it from jumping out of the split. Once the froe has been bashed into the rail you can rest the rail in between each cross beam of the cleaving brake. Then use the cleaving brake to hold the rail in place whilst pressure is put onto the froe handle to encourage the split along the rail. 

It's important to make sure that the whole width of the froe is inserted into the split, otherwise it could easily jump out of the split and cause an injury once pressure is applied onto the handle. 

Using the froe and cleaving brake to split an ash pole.

The real skill comes in keeping the split running straight along the grain. To do this keep an eye on where the split is going, if the split begins to run out so that one half is bigger than the other then flip the rail over so that the larger half of the rail is on the bottom. Then push downwards on the rail whilst also pushing downwards with froe. This will encourage the split to run straight. 

Note how the split almost zig-zags its way along the length; this is partially because of the knots but also because I am continually flipping the rail over to keep the split running straight.

We needed 5 rails in total, so split 3 lengths of ash. once these were split we used the same process to split the uprights, these should be 1.2m (4') long and about 8 - 10 cm (3-4") in diameter.

Split rails waiting to be peeled. 

Once all of these components had been split the bark was peeled off of each length with a draw knife. Though I used a shave horse to hold the piece of wood whilst I peeled the bark, there are many other methods that you could use. 

Peeling with a draw knife and shave horse. 

Another really simple but effective way of holding the rail or upright for peeling is to drive a stake into the ground next to the cleaving brake that is roughly the same height as the lower rail. A double ended nail can then be driven into the top of the stake. Place the length of wood through the cleaving brake and then onto this nail, the pressure from the two rails will hold the length of wood on the nail and prevent it from slipping whilst it's peeled (see pics below). 

Note the stake with nail on top to the left of the cleaving brake.

The pressure from the two cross beams of the cleaving brake will hold this rail onto the nail. 

Once the rails and uprights were completed they were placed onto the ground so that the mortise joints to be drilled into the uprights could be marked out. 

Over the next couple of days I'll be shaving down the tenons on each of the rails, cutting out the mortise joints in the uprights and cleaving a central upright and the two diagonal supports.

Once the gate hurdles are complete they'll be used on and around the farm. One of my colleagues at work is hoping to use them during event days to screen off an area where he uses an old Lister engine to power old fashioned farm machinery such as a beet slicer and an oat roller.